Shakespeare Theatre Company: Here There Are Blueberries

 Based on the gift of a photo album to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, it's hard to just define this a play.  It's so much more.  It's a documentary.  It's an unraveling.  It's an indictment.  It's a question that cannot be answered.

A group of actors takes on a range of roles starting with members of the archive department at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.  The story starts with the arrival of a photo album which turns out to contain dozens of photographs from Auschwitz.  Only these pictures showed no prisoners.  Rather they depicted the lives of the Germans who ran the place engaged in utterly normal, even celebratory moments while every day they worked to exterminate Jews and other undesirables.  We watch as the dedicated historians work to discover who the individuals in the photos are.  We learn that it was the personal pictures of the camp director's first assistant, Karl Hocker.  Though the lens of his photos this irreconcilable world of "normal" pursuits, holiday celebrations, down time at a chalet built on the land occupied by the notorious death camp, picnics, and other gatherings.

In moments, various of the actors assume other roles in little vignettes about the photos, or the way the photos led to further discoveries.  It was enthralling.  

The play was staged at STC's theatre across from Capitol One Area on F Street NW.  When entering the lobby, I casually noticed what looked like a series of obelisks draped in clothe.  Upon leaving the clothe was done and the obelisks are display cases containing carefully recreated facsimiles from the photo album.

This is a production that will sit freshly with me for some time to come.

The show opens with an homage to the little Leica cameras.  Charles Thurston plays the accordion while Nemuna Ceesay explains German's obsession with taking photographs in the late 1930's and early 1940's.

Elizabeth Stahlmann as Rebecca Erbelding the lead archivist in charge of the project.

Rebecca Erbelding listens as the image of Peter Wirths (Grant James Verjas), the US Army Corporal who found the album and held on to for over 60 years, is projected on the wall explaining what he thinks he has and wonders if she would be interested in seeing it.

Kathleen Chalfant as Judy Cohen, the Lead Archivist at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Projections on various surfaces of photos from the album (and other images) play an important part in the production.

Maboud Ebrahimzadeh portraying the German Tilman Taube comes to DC to confirm that his grandfather's images are in the photos, and everything he thought he knew about this man is turned on its head.

Taube then returns to Germany where he works to locate the relatives of others depicted in the images.  In this vignette, he interviews a man played by Grant James Varjas who knows who his relative was and utterly renounces him.

In one of the more poignant moments Taube is speaking with the grandson (Charles Thurston) of Rainer Hoss the "architect" of Auschwitz as a concept.  It is a glimpse into the generational guilt of the relatives of those in charge of this unspeakable evil.